Young Adult Time Travel Fiction Book Series

Quantum Touch by Michael R. Stern

Series Excerpt

As we strode up the sidewalk under an arch of new leaves, the garden flowers greeted us. I hadn’t really noticed when I’d left home that morning, but the tulips had joined my daffodils in a parade of bright colors. I had planted almost two hundred bulbs in the fall, and the flowers were now waving in red, yellow, white, and purple. There were some multi-colored ones, yellow and purple, and a few that looked like candy canes. Ash said, “When winter comes, can spring be far behind?” The flowers were a perfect foreground to my white house. I reached into my pocket for my keys, but a soft metallic ping on the walkway made me stop. My desk key. “I forgot to lock my desk.”

“Anything worth stealing?”

“Probably, but only I would steal it.”

I dropped the key back in my pocket as we climbed the steps. Linda was there, waiting.

“Hi, honey, I’m home,” I said, smiling as I kissed her.

“Fritz, what happened to your face? What’s going on? George McAllister has called twice in the last twenty minutes. He sounded upset.”

“Lots to tell you. It’s been a strange day. Garden looks great.”

She looked from me to Ashley, who nodded in agreement. “Well?” she questioned.

“Hey, let me get my coat off, okay?” I pleaded.

“You’re not wearing a coat!”

“I was speaking of my figurative coat.” I hung the jacket in the hall closet. “Did George want me to call him?”

“No, he said he’ll call back.”

Ashley, sniffing, said, “Something smells tasty.”

“Lasagna,” she said, anticipating his next question.

“Oh, goody!” said Ashley. Linda’s lasagna had won a cooking contest, and Ashley loves it. So do I.

“Linda, I have a lot to tell you, and Ash hasn’t heard the whole story yet. Sandy Horton is coming, too. She was talking to Ash, so I invited her.” Ashley and I sat at the kitchen table.

Linda frowned at me, her eyebrows lowered and her head cocked. She said, “You can tell it again when she gets here. What’s happened? Want something to drink, Ash?”

“Diet soda.”

“Like you need it,” I said, as she opened the bottle. “Lin, when we settle down, I’ll tell you the whole thing.”

“Do you want a soda?” she asked me.

“No, thanks.” I walked to the liquor cabinet and took out a bottle.

“Fritz, it’s not even five o’clock.”

“It’s five o’clock somewhere. It’ll take some the ache away.” I removed my watch and changed the time. “See, five o’clock. At least in my little world.” I poured and got a couple of ice cubes. “OK, let’s talk.”

“Sandy should be here any minute.” Ashley said. With that, there was a knock.

“Sorry it took so long, Fritz.” Sandy handed me a paper bag. “I bought wine for dinner. Hi, Linda. Hi, Ash.”

After Sandy settled in, I started.

“At the start of third period, I opened the door to my room, and we walked into the woods. And met Robert E. Lee.”

“Oh come on,” Linda said, looking at Ash, who shrugged. “You walked through the door and into the woods?”

“Yeah, but I could still see a door outlined on the scenery. It was just there, a rectangular outline. The doorway has to be the entrance to a portal. Let me keep going.” I related the conversation and the class questions and how the fourth-period class joined us. I told them everything I could recall. “When the period ended, we could hear the bell ring. The classroom door was always visible, right there in the forest. I don’t know if that scene traveled to now or if we went back in time. I wonder if General Lee told anyone else.”

“What happened next?” asked Linda.

“Well, after class ended, we walked back through the door and back into the hall. Ash, that’s when I told you dinner would be interesting. Anyway, I walked back into my classroom, but it wasn’t there. I had just enough time to see a group of men and a large Ford sign over a building that looked like a factory. Before I had time to react, I got hit in the face. I fell backwards into the hallway.”

“You told me you tripped. And the cut was from hitting something.”

“We were surrounded by kids, Ash.” I brought my briefcase to the table, and took out the books. “After lunch, I spotted this book under some papers.” I flipped to the marked page. “This picture was taken in 1937. The photographer said later that a man appeared and disappeared before he could take more pictures of him. Other onlookers described a similar sighting. Here. Read the caption.” I took off a shoe and held it next to the book. “Look at these. I think that’s me.”

“Fritz, that’s nuts,” Linda said. “That picture is almost eighty years old. How could that be you today, when it’s been in that book since it was published?”

“That’s just one thing we need to talk about.”

“And if that really happened, it’s dangerous,” she said. “Not something you should be fooling around with. Have you looked in a mirror?”

I told her I hadn’t, but I wanted to finish the story. I’d gotten patched up, I said, and went back to class, and everything about the room was normal. “Ash, that’s when you told me the kids were talking.”

Ashley said, “And they were telling it pretty much like you just did. At least about meeting Lee. Other teachers know the story now too. You’re gonna have some serious ‘splaining’ to do.”

I knew he was right, but what could I say? I couldn’t get my brain around what had happened. I told them that the only things I could do were guess or lie, and lying had filled my day. “If I told them what really happened . . .”

My phone rang. “It’s George,” I said, looking at the caller ID. “Hi, George. What’s up?”

“Fritz, this is getting serious.” His sentences came like rockets. “I’ve had calls from six teachers and some parents in the past half hour. I don’t know what to tell them.”

“What did you say, George?”

“I said I was aware of the situation, and that I would investigate further. Fritz, if they start calling the superintendent, this could get out of hand.”

“Hmm. George, hold on a second,” holding my phone against my shirt. I looked at Linda. She recognized the look and told me to invite them over. Come for dinner, I told him. That way Lois would know everything, and he could avoid calls.

“Good idea. Thanks. What time?”

“How about six?” Linda had raised six fingers.

“I’ll bring some wine. See you then.”

I turned off my phone. “They can leave messages. Now where was I?”

Looking at my watch, I said, “It’s 5:15. Should we wait until George gets here? Do you want some help setting up, Lin?”

She said, “All I have to do is get out a couple more plates and glasses. Let’s talk about what’s important. I want to know now. You can tell it again, but let’s get the story so we can think about what to do before George and Lois arrive. Two heads are better than one,” looking at Ashley, his chin in his hand, listening, “and in this case, four heads.”

Ashley said, “Four heads. Sounds like a real monster.” He made a face and took a long, noisy breath. The monster said, “Dinner smells really good, Lin.”

“Monster is right,” I said. “When seventh period started, I opened the door.” I hesitated and looked at my hand. I told them what had happened, including my story about a friend in Hollywood. “Actually that was pretty good, given short notice, don’t you think? I wish that were true.”

Ashley took over. “That’s when you came to my classroom and said you needed to go to the office.”

Now impatient, Linda asked, “And?” Her arms crossed, she was waiting for the punch line.

“So I went to the office and George stopped me, you know how he is, ‘we have a problem, what’s going on? Blah, blah, blah.’ I told him to think about what he had heard, did it make any sense? Then, and here’s the mistake, or maybe it wasn’t a mistake, I told him he could see for himself. We went to the classroom.” I paused again and wiggled my fingers.

Linda asked, “What’s wrong with your hand?”

“Nothing. But I got a shock, you know, static, and when I opened the door, we were somewhere else. That might be part of this.” I looked at my hand again. “Anyway, George and I walked into the Oval Office, met the president, got checked out by a secret service agent, and I told the president and George what happened today. Then he came back through with me and George into the school. That’s when Ash and Sandy turned up.”

Ashley picked up the story. He said he and Sandy had been waiting for me in his classroom, and when they heard talking in the hallway, they went out and saw my door close. He looked in the window and felt like his eyes were popping from his head. “Talk about weird. Lin, I was looking at the president. We went in, Fritz introduced us. All of us took a tour of the school. The president shot a couple of baskets in the gym and signed some autographs. Then we reconnected him to the White House.”

My turn again. “When he went back and the door closed, the Oval Office disappeared. So here we are now, and I have no idea how any of this happened.”

“Good. So now we have the outline, and all we need to do is figure out how to stop it from happening again.” Linda answered. She left the kitchen, and checked the dining room. “We have a few minutes until George and Lois get here, so let’s stop and set the table. We can think about this as we go.”

“Dining room?” I asked Linda.

“Of course,” she said as she opened the oven.

The dining room is the only formal room in the house. Linda’s grandmother had wanted her to have the furniture. A mahogany table, oval with three leaves, and matching buffet, breakfront, and server. Hand carved legs and drawers. Antique knobs and handles. Leather-covered chairs with clawed feet and extra padding, which I really like. Twelve people can sit at the table and keep their elbows unscathed. I took out the special silverware and handed it to Ashley. Linda had taught him to set a table long after his mother had given up trying. Ashley and I had visited his parents in Connecticut once, before Linda and I got married. His mother kept referring to him as “the uncivilized one.” He laughed, a sound that has become as familiar to me as the changing seasons.

I grabbed the crystal glasses and followed him to the table. Sandy helped Ash.

“Do you think that the static has anything to do with the lightning?” Ashley asked, now that he knew what had happened.

“No talking without me,” Linda called from the kitchen. “No fair.”

“Okay, hon.” I knew that she wanted to know and, more important, that she could help put the pieces in place. She’s got a great analytic mind.

The doorbell rang. George was there with Lois, who asked “So what trouble are you causing today?” She smiled. “C’mon in,” I said, smiling back.

Linda and Ashley came to the door, Sandy right behind. When Lois saw Ashley, she said, “So both the troublemakers are at it, I see! Hello, Sandy, Linda.”

“Nice to see you too, Lois,” Ashley replied. Sandy waved.

Lois is in her late 50s. Some think her pushy. To those who don’t know her, she is an obnoxious, abrasive annoyance attached to the school principal. But we know her well as a smart, reasonable, and reasoning woman whose opinion and insight would be valuable. She’s also an awful tease. Although her husband often doesn’t, she can be counted on to “get it”. Now everyone had arrived. “Lovely flowers, Linda,” Lois said, pointing to the vase of red tulips and yellow daffodils at the center of the table.

“Do you want something to drink?” I asked.

George said, “Oops, I left the wine in the car,” and got up to retrieve it.

While he was out, Lois said, “George is upset. He’s received about a dozen calls since he got home, and he won’t tell me anything more than there was a problem at school, and he’s handling it. And now here we are. So you two are up to something.”

“Lois, when you leave tonight, you’ll know everything.” I said. “We haven’t had time to consider this puzzle, and we need to solve it.”

George returned with a merlot and a chardonnay, red and white, and put them on the table. Ashley reached for them. “May I take a look?” George handed him the bottles. “Nice. Have you had these before?”

“Yes. I think you’ll enjoy them. Since I didn’t ask what we were having, I brought both.” Ashley liked wine; he had taken a wine tasting class and then gone to Europe a couple of summers ago on a tasting tour.

I said, “I think they’ll be gone before too long.”

Still in the dark about all this “mystery”, as she called it, Lois was getting annoyed. “Yes, yes, we can drink all the wine later, but I want . . . to know . . . what’s . . . going on!”

“Dinner’s ready,” said Linda. Lois’s tight lips and finger tapping showed her increasing impatience. Ash followed Linda into the kitchen.

I said, “Lois, Linda is a great cook, and I want you to eat. I’ll tell you all what happened, during dinner. Then we can discuss this. Okay?” I called to the kitchen and asked Linda to wait with my plate for now. “Ash, would you open the wine while I help serve.”

“Stay there,” Lois ordered and got up to help. The wine poured, plates delivered, and everyone waiting, I took a deep breath. The mixed aromas of garlic and meat sauce grabbed my nose and whispered to my stomach. I looked at everyone enviously, a variety of cheeses still percolating on their plates.

When Ashley sat down, I raised my glass in a toast, “to answers,” and sipped. “Go ahead and eat,” I said. “I’ll talk.” I retold the story of the day’s events, adding some details, trying to picture the scenes as they occurred, looking for clues. The one person who had heard none of this before, Lois, listened intently and kept looking at George for corroboration, and he nodded yes when he could.

When I finished, Lois said, “Well, you boys have had a busy day, haven’t you?”

“Lois,” I asked, “if you had heard this without the whole story, would you have believed it?”

“I’m not sure I do now,” she answered. “It’s just so completely . . . unbelievable.”

“You should be in my shoes. It was strange enough just to have it happen. But four times, with the kids involved, this isn’t just strange, it’s scary. And I have no idea what it’s all about.”

Ashley said, “What I said earlier. Do you think it had anything to do with the lightning?”

Puzzled, Lois asked, “Lightning?”

“You know Fritz was hit by lightning a couple of weeks ago.” Talking and eating paused. “And we had lightning and thunder all day long today. Fritz felt static each time he opened the door to an adventure.”

Lois said, “George, now I understand why you’re upset, and why all those calls came in.” George nodded.

The story told, I sighed and leaned back into the padding, took a sip of wine, and said, “I wonder why we went where we did? Or did they come here? Or did we meet in some middle?”

It was quiet again. With her voice soft but convinced, Lois said, “Just looking at you all, I don’t think you’re kidding.” She examined me, then Ash. “We DO have a problem and not just about time travel. The students will tell everyone, and we have to deal with the parents, the administration. I think we might hear from the newspapers at some point, probably soon.” George and I looked at her and then at each other. “And clearly, your little trip to the past did some damage. You’re going to have a sizeable black eye.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” I said. “And the newspapers could be a problem.”

Linda said, “And don’t forget the White House."

“We’re not going to get away with the Hollywood friend story, either,” Ashley said.

Running my hand through my hair, I said, “Then we need to do two things. First, we need a plausible story for everyone outside the government. Second, I’ve got to figure out how this portal thing works, fast, so I can keep it from happening. I don’t want the kids to go through anything like the Triangle Fire again.” Everyone was eating again. “Talking to Robert E. Lee was pretty cool though.”

Lois injected, “But what if you’d met him at Gettysburg instead? That wouldn’t have been so ‘cool’”

“No, you’re right Lois. Sorry.” But I wasn’t really sorry. It was fascinating. But why Appomattox and not Gettysburg?

Lois said, “George, you haven’t said anything. What do you think?”